One to Ruin
by Luna Ligerstripe
Summary: There was something inherently wrong in seeing the acrobat bound by a straightjacket. oneshot/drabble "series"
1. Statistics

A/N: Been a while, huh?

Disclaimer: I own nothing, all Doublefine and the like, yadda yadda yadda.

Rating: I'll set it to T, just in case. Might be some gore and swearing later, who knows.

Spoilers: Up till the end of the game just to be safe.

Summary: There was something inherently wrong in seeing the acrobat bound by a straightjacket.

Pairings: Raz x Lili will be the strongest, probably, with some light Sasha x Milla in the background for the most part… I'm not really a romance writer but it's kinda hard to write Psychonauts without traces of those two pairings slipping in, huh?

Author's note of doom! Feel free to skip: Alright, so, lemme try to explain how this'll work. It'll likely be a, er, oneshot/drabble "series" if you will – vignettes to use literary terms. Short little things, not necessarily linear or with any central conflict. Hence the chance for character studies and the like. Hopefully I'll stick with it long enough to build up an overall plot of some kind, but who knows! Anyway, if you have any suggestions for situations you'd like to see or something, if you mention it I just might consider it. Anyway, yeah, that's that!

* * *

_But when Fate destines one to ruin it begins by blinding the eyes of his understanding. - James Baillie Fraser_

Statistically speaking, it's no surprise that Razputin Aquato went insane.

In fact, it's more surprising that it took fourteen years for insanity to catch up with him. He was, after all, a telepath – a psychic ability that was notorious for its high rate of mental breakdowns – and a _powerful _one at that. His psychic abilities, being as extensive as they were at such a young age, must have been a huge burden on his mind. Plus, his experiences at Whispering Rock had exposed him to _numerous_ insane minds, and, well, you know what they say: _"I__f you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." _

So, statistically, it shouldn't have been a surprise. Statistically, it shouldn't have been a shock. That didn't stop Milla from breaking down into tears or Lili from setting fire to the poor messenger. And even though everyone should have expected it, everyone should have prepared, it's still a serious blow to the Psychonauts - such raw potential now worthless.

They know better than to leave that potential unchecked, however.

"Only the best," they say. Bureaucrats are bureaucrats; ever word has another meaning. _Only the most secure_. "He'll be comfortable." _He'll be watched_. "Everything will be fine." _We'll make absolutely certain of it. _

The place they took him was called Steady Saint's Institute for the Mentally Unstable, a place far enough from prying eyes but close enough to Psychonauts H.Q. that in the unlikely chance that there was a… complication, teams could be quickly dispatched. Being a government and more importantly a 'Nauts facility, it was filled with criminals, psychics, and a mixture of the two. Said patient base caused it to have high security and access to technologies that could keep powerful psychics in check. So logically they'd send the recently-discharged and highly unstable Agent Aquato there – you know, incase his mind had warped into the dangerous sort.

Just in case. The 'Nauts had always been big on being absolutely certain, being absolutely sure – a certainty that some criticized as edging dangerously close to paranoia.

Such paranoia had made it so regulations that restricted Agent Nein and Agent Vodello's involvement in the diagnosis or transportation of Agent Aquato to Saint's (as it was more commonly called), but they had been allowed to visit. Well, not really – he was still too unstable, they said, and so visitors could only observe.

But even observation through the one-way mirror into the boy's new cell took too much out of the agents, so that they could hardly stand to stay long. It was little, almost indescribable things that were the worst – the way his wine-colored hair fell over his forehead in a unusual manner, the shivers and feverish glances to people who weren't there, or the wild look in those green eyes. And besides, there was something just plain _wrong _about seeing the prodigy suppressed by the bulky helmet that controlled psychic ability. There was something inherently wrong in seeing the acrobat bound by a straightjacket.

And yet, everyone knew it wasn't going to change any time soon.


	2. Too Far

A/N: Not incredibly proud of this chapter, eek. Hoping I'll get into the swing of this in the next few. Oh well. Hey, actual dialogue! Remember to R&R – every time you don't review, Loboto makes puppy soup. Do you want that? No. No you don't.

Disclaimers: see first chapter.

* * *

_When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane – Herman Hesse_

Sasha is the first one to visit him.

It takes them little over a month to determine he's not dangerous, to find just the right amount of power for his Psychic Suppressor Device (such a fancy name for such an ugly helmet), a month to find a cell that's nice and isolated. Everyone knew the Psychonauts weren't exactly in their prime, but… a month?

It's lucky, then, that Sasha the sort who could wait a month. It helped him, even – he hid behind statistics for a while, toyed with denial, but after a month he even begun to accept it. Now he's calm, mentally prepared, the usual stoicism as the orderly leads him down the corridors to where he can visit.

Prepared or not, it doesn't stop his stomach from clenching as he enters the room and actually sees him there huddled in the corner. The bulky Psychic Suppressor helmet was traded in for a more discrete strip of purplish material that encircles the boy's head, right where his goggles should have been, the straitjacket strangely baggy around his small frame. They closed the door behind the German and the inmate looked up slightly, then away. Sasha prepared himself, took a deep breath, and-

"…Sasha?" The boy did a double take and turned fully to face the taller man. "S-sasha!"

"Razputin," he answered a little hesitantly as Raz began to move closer. "How… are you feeling?"

"Well, they think I'm crazy." Cue trademarked grin. "Trying to convince me I'm in an asylum. Can't be!" Sasha watched him, trying to think, now clinging to that grim hope that _just maybe_… Raz mistook it for interest. "I've been to an asylum, remember? Not enough rats here. Too much light. So it can't be!"

There was that confidence in the voice that warms Sasha Nein as he takes a seat. His mind was still occupied when the boy began to speak again.

"Besides, I'm not crazy. Trying to convince me I'm in an asylum and I'm not even crazy! Ha!" He chuckled, voice taking on a slightly crazed edge that causes the cold 'Naut to frown slightly. Raz's laughter began to slow, began to fade, and he looked up at his mentor with a darkening face. "…Right? Right, Sasha?"

"Razptu-" He tried to speak but suddenly Raz began to babble, a frenzied spark in his eyes.

"Right! Of course not. They try to convince me I'm crazy, ha ha, that I'm paranoid, but no! Can't be." He looked away and shuddered slightly. "I've seen paranoid, seen their minds and no _no_, I'm not crazy. They try to make me think I'm paranoid, trying to make a milkman out of me… Ha ha…."

He glanced up at Sasha, who had leaned forward and placed his hand on his chin in concern.

"Razputin…" After saying it so many times today, the name still leaves a strange taste on his tongue. "Can you… What do you remember?"

The inmate looked up at him, terrified, before slipping into an uneasy grin. "What… What do you mean, Sa- I mean, err, uh, Agent Nein?" He frowned. "I remember plenty of things. You know – Whispering Rock, sure, the circus, missions-"

"You know what I mean." Sasha said, giving a slight sigh. Raz frowned again and looked away.

"I remember… mmm…" he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, "Just a usual mission. We had to sneak into a warehouse, I went first – I was always best at that stuff…" He looked up and Sasha gave him an encouraging nod. "It was easy, real easy. Acrobatics did it just fine, and… then it… didn't go so well. Went south, and they…"

He was beginning to shake, eyes closed tight as he was straining to remember. Without knowing it, Sasha leaned forward slightly, spouting off the occasional "Yes? Yes?" as the boy kept speaking.

"Separated us – tried to… get info… a-and…" His shaking had become more and more pronounced and he was now staring dumbly into space, eyes darting around as if watching something that wasn't there. Sasha wanted to push, wanted to try just a little harder – because maybe, just maybe, if Raz could locate what had… left him like this, he could conquer it. But the shaking had become so bad and the orderly was moving toward the room. _Too far, Nein_, something in the back of his mind warned. _Too far indeed_, he answered.

"Razputin," he said, trying to wake the boy. He placed a hand on his shoulder and shook him. "Razputin!"

He snapped out of it, shaking his head as if to shake off the lurking thoughts. "I… I'm sorry, I can't."

"It's alright." He pushed his sunglasses further up his nose and stood, not meeting the boy's eyes. He paused as if to speak and Raz stared up at him expectantly, but he _couldn't_. Just like Raz could not face what had happened, he could not face the fact that his protégé was just too far gone.

As he began to walk away, he heard the desperate cries of the inmate.

"Agent Nein, this is just s dream, right?" A stream of nervous laughter echoed in the cell, "I'm not crazy, right?

"Agent Nein?" Sasha kept walking. "Agent Nein? Agent Nein! Sasha! Sasha!

"Don't leave me here, Sasha. Please, Sasha. Sasha!" The cries began to die down the further away he got.

And as soon as Agent Nein was outside the asylum, he lit a cigarette and began to smoke with shaking hands.


	3. Breaking Down Walls

These keep coming out feeling really awkward eek. Note to self: write more stream of consciousness crazy babble!

Disclaimers: Usual. I don't own the Most Excellent Game Psychonauts, yadda yadda yadda.

Make sure to R&R!

* * *

_Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down. - Anonymous_

There was only the sound of the straightjacket as it shifted around him, the indescribable sound of the white room's floor making noise as he moved slightly. His knees had grown too sore and so he had begun to shift to change the pressure. Briefly he wondered why he was sitting on the floor and not the bed. He also wondered why it mattered when he had bigger issues to deal with.

_So easy to fix_, he thought as his green eyes drifted back towards the floor, _so easy… Just need help help HELP. Sasha won't. Nope never of course he won't, he never-_

"Razptuin," said one of the nurses or orderlies - he still hadn't bothered to figure out which is which - from outside his cell. He paused in his frantic thoughts but didn't look up. "You have a visitor."

Raz looked up, frowning. A visitor? Sasha and Milla had visited so recently that the hours were still tangled in his mind (time was slippery here, _so so slippery_), and his father wasn't coming for at least another week. He turned and leaned against one of the walls, his restraints and walls rustling in time. _Didn't make sense didn't fit in nobody visits nobody comes to Thorney Towers – is this Thorney Towers? Nobody ever comes._

So that when _she _stepped through the door, red hair bound by nothing but a headband that hardly matched the rest of her outfit – as per usual – his breath caught in his chest and he tensed up in a mix of emotions. And for a moment, neither of them could breathe.

"You…" he broke the silence suddenly, staring at her but not quite able to meet her eyes. "You cut your hair." She paused and reached a hand to touch her own hair, the dropped it to her side again.

"Twice." She responded, while he looked away and shuffled nervously. She took this as a cue to make her way to the bed in the corner of the cell, the dingy thing camouflaged by the pure white scheme of this place.

Twice. Had it been that long? He'd had so many missions and had been bound to the circus when he had free time, hardly able to see anyone, let alone _her_. How long? A year? _More_? He couldn't remember and that frightened him.

"Lili," he breathed and she tensed. She turned to him but he couldn't speak. _Save her save them save them all so why is she here why am_ I _here-?_

"Aw, Raz," she teased and he shuffled over to the bed when she sat down, "have gotten yourself into trouble again?"

He tried to grin at her like he used to, back when they always joked in quiet with hushed voices and pressed close – but he couldn't. So he gave her a weak, nervous smile. "Well, you know how they are…" Like it was a joke.

Silence settled over the two again, but that was alright as far as Raz was concerned. His thoughts were frantic as always but it felt different, feverish but with a fluttering heart, and for a moment he felt more relaxed, like he could ease up a little and –

Break.

"Lili," he sobbed suddenly, falling to his knees. "Oh Lili, Lili, something's _wrong_."

She drew back slightly, her eyes wide and bewildered.

"They say I'm crazy but I still don't know. All I know is that something's wrong because…" He looked away from her, fully aware he was babbling but unable to stop. "Because I can't – can't hear anything anymore and I can't reach out and touch and oh God _I can't see without my goggles_, Lili."

He shook and gulped in air and from the corner of his eye he could see her reaching out a hand, hesitantly, gingerly, as if to see if he was really there or not. He tensed and looked up, drawing back as she moved closer. There was something _wrong_ here and she kept moving closer because she was Lili, always moving forward Lili, always pushing the envelope when no one else could, always going strong when he was stuck behind in the asylum –

But then she stopped, let her wrist fall limp and drew back her hand. Instead, she sunk to the floor and to her knees so that her pretty little skirt touched the white floor and she was eye level with him.

"Raz," she said, placing her hands on his shoulder. He looked up and to the side – not into her eyes. Never into her eyes. "Raz, c'mon. This is nothing, you'll manage." _You always do_.

It's not his thought but he can't hear but – he shook and fell toward her, silent as he buried his head in her shoulder. His eyes were forced shut but he could feel her working her arms around him and drawing him closer. It was silent and just _them_ for a moment, almost right except he was still shaking and biting his lip to keep himself from babbling nonsense.

What he couldn't see was Lili, holding the crumbled boy in her arms, biting her own lip in order to keep _herself _together.


	4. The Walls Whisper

Another chapter! Fun fun fun. Next one will be some exposition I swear! For now it's time to play with the subconscious. Hurrah!

Disclaimers: usual, see first chapter.

* * *

_You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?' - George Bernard Shaw_

_The air is thick, humid and much too hot. It's summer again, the buzzing of mosquitoes and humming of old, dying lamps filling the otherwise silence of the campgrounds. They are sitting outsider, even though they both should know they'll just end up with mosquito bites if they stay out here. But that's ok. It's part of the fun, daring yourself to play telekinetic keep-away with hungry bugs. _

_There's another game, though, a board game; the discarded box to the side is printed with the word 'Waterloo' in large letters. They've been at it for… how long? Time doesn't work right here. The board and pieces and the picnic table and the whole world is tinted red through his goggles and everything feels right again. Back at camp, yup – playing with one of the campers but he can't quite see who it is and though they speak he can't make out the words. Yes, yes he can, but they mean nothing in a voice that sounds like no one. But that's ok. Everything is pleasant as the two campers play Waterloo in the warm Whispering Rock night._

_And a moment later he's at the lake, the moon still reflecting red on the surface of the water. The change is illogical but there is no logic here, why should there be? It's normal, then, that Linda is there, dripping wet, and so is Mr. Pokeylope. They talk about getting married but wait, he cuts in, isn't Linda still married to Kochamara? She's crying and he's sorry sorry, takes a step forward, so sorry, takes a step too close to the lake –_

_And suddenly he's not himself._

_He is but he isn't; he's almost Raz but not quite. He can feel his arms and legs strapped to the uncomfortable chair, his forehead strapped down too but he doesn't know to what. From the bottom of his eyes he can see his legs but they're not _his_ legs, they're almost-Raz's. _

_The chair whispers to him, the walls whisper to him, muffled screams and panic thoughts. Almost-Raz is used to this but not to _this_. These voices, these thoughts are disjointed and not sane, they do not whisper to him but to the air. It's like they're leftover snippets of something long ago, feel old, but why?_

"_How are you feeling today?" The doctor in the corner clears his throat and smiles and almost-Raz. From his seat, he says nothing. "Ah, yes. Well. Shall we proceed?" More silence._

"_This will cleanse you of delusions. It will drive the voices away, yes – so just relax." _And don't scream too much._ The voice in almost-Raz's head is the doctor's but doctor is not speaking. How odd._

_The chair is plunging backwards suddenly and he tenses up. What is he plunging into? Before he can think suddenly he feels water, freeing water, exploding against his skin in a million needles of ice as he breaks the surface. Almost-Raz is shocked and afraid but Raz-Raz is TERRIFIED from his place in the back of almost-Raz's mind. The ice water blurs his vision and his existence and almost-Raz and Raz-Raz are one; there are hands snaking up around him and pulling him closer and down and deeper into the water. He tries to scream but it's just silent bubbles in the deceptively shallow pit of ice water. _

_Maybe if he weren't drowning he'd notice the freezing cold or the chunks of ice or the feel of the chair moving back upwards. There is a disconnect and the hands, the glowing hands are dragging him through and out of almost-Raz but only for a moment. He breaks the surface and can breathe again. _

Still alive_, doctor's voice muses and he tries to look over to where the man in the clean pressed coat is standing, meanwhile trying to fill his lungs with air and not freeze to death. And block out the memory of his screams and the screams that are whispered into his mind._

"_Make them… stop," he begs in a voice that is not his own, "The voices, please, stop stop stop-"_

_The doctor sighs and the chair is moving again. He braces himself for the tub of water again, but barely catches the thought-_

-maybe it will kill him this time-

_-before the hands catch hold of him and begin to pull violent down. Deeper deeper deeper no hope just water every nothing but WATER-_

Raz awoke to the cool prick of a needle in his arm and the sudden dizzying surge of that mix of psitanium and sedatives beginning to chew at his brain. He could feel himself thrashing, just another of the fits they'd hospitalized him for. As he began to settle into nothing more than ragged breaths he could feel the arms of the orderlies unwind from around him as they moved to leave.

As the familiar buzz of psitanium took over his mind, he sat up and steadied himself again the wall. _What?_ Raz had night terrors, sure, but they had always been memories of things that'd happened before (things he could not think about without driving himself into a frenzy.) But that…

"Not mine," he gasped as the orderlies shuffled along outside the hall.

He stared down at his crumpled sheets as he tried to think past the molasses-like feel of the drugs working on his mind. That dream… was a memory, sure, but not his. That couldn't_ be_, just… could not be.

A telepathic dream?

He'd had them before, and used to have them fairly often. Snippets of someone else's memories stored on the walls or on a book or a blade of grass that was accidently picked up by a telepath and interwoven into their subconscious until it bubbled up as a dream. That's what it had to have been, it had felt like such a classic telepathic dream. But…

"Not mine. _What_?" Raz leaned back until his head hit the wall, and he frowned when he felt the suppressor against the back of his head. That was still there, was still blocking his powers, so how could he have picked up that memory? His mind felt so groggy and slow now and he couldn't think.

"It can't… be… But… What?" He hung his head dejectedly for a moment before slowly sinking back into his bed. Oh, how Sasha would have sighed for the sluggish movement of his one steel-trap mind. _Think, Raz, think_-

And he began to laugh.

It had finally clicked in place in his mind, as if he'd suddenly brushed away all the mental cobwebs. Of course! He rolled over onto his side and began to relax.

"This is gonna be _fun_."


	5. Practice

Disclaimers: the usual

Author's notes: Hey! Just a chapter to prove I'm not dead. The mentioned exposition chapter will be coming… eventually. Well, actually, I could do an exposition chapter OR start one of the "arcs" – plots that take place over a few related vignettes. The first arc and exposition chapter are kinda interchangeable, so… any opinions?

Also, I heard some people express some confusion at what exactly was going on in the last chapter. I'll stick the explanation at the bottom of this chapter so people who don't want to read it don't need to see that paragraph of doom.

I was planning for the thing revealed in this chapter to be revealed more slowly and subtly but now I'm worried I'd do it TOO subtly and in a confusing manner or something. Anyway I'll stop rambling and leave you to it.

* * *

_Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. - Martha Graham_

Practice, they say, make perfect.

It was a motto in the circus – no, a way of life. Those who did not practice could not succeed. Those who did not succeed fell off the tightrope and broke their necks. Children who did not practice ended up never becoming acrobats, and ended up as shameful outcasts who sold tickets or made the popcorn. Practice existed and lingered under the big top the way the smell of buttery popcorn and rotting trash lingered in the circus air.

And, besides, Raz had accepted practicing as part of him. After all, back in the circus, nobody was going to teach him how to deal with those powers of his – so he'd resorted to practicing. Practicing every night when no one was around, when he was sure no one was watching… Ah, those bittersweet memories of a long-gone childhood that he desperately tried to cling to now.

It was a good thing, then, that Razputin was so used to the slow, weary trail that came with practicing. Because that dream – that wonderful, terrible dream – had given him a hint, a spark that he knew he could practice. It'd shown him that maybe, just _maybe_, the psychic suppressor wrapped around his forehead wasn't quite strong enough, that maybe he had just a trickle of psychic energy he could access. He had thought long and hard and considered and wondered, _wondered_ if maybe if he practiced he could turn that uncertain trickle into something useful.

Into something that could keep him just a little saner.

There was something funny about his situation though, the kind of funny he might have smirked at before but now chuckles at because there was something about being crazy that made him lose all restraints and made him babble and giggle. It was that kind of funny the way it reminded him of when he was younger, how the first little bubble of psychic ability showing up now was like they way it'd showed up back in the circus when he'd first picked up a scrap of conversation that'd never been spoken and a secret kept behind closed lips. And just like before, he had to practice in secret because they'd stop him if they knew – his father before, the orderlies now with a stronger suppressor or something. Or that's what he thought; he figured it was best not to find out.

Maybe opening up his mind and using telepathy again wasn't the best idea in an _asylum_, but… maybe, he thought, if he could just have a steady stream of _other people's thoughts_ he could ignore his own every once and a while. It'd probably open the door to horrible memories stuck to the walls of the building and waking nightmares from the inmates and whatever it was Sasha was hiding behind his sunglasses now and Lili's sorrow but _maybe it'd be worth it_, he always tried to remind himself. Maybe it'd remind him why he had joined the Psychonauts in the first place.

Maybe it'd remind him why it'd been worth it to sacrifice his sanity for the Psychonauts.

So today he would sit quietly in his cell and practice mind reading on the orderlies. And maybe tomorrow he'd attempt to try it on one of the other inmates.

And maybe in a month he'd be able to pick thoughts off the tops of people's heads or wrestle something out of Sasha or Milla or be able to try to have a genuine conversation with Lili by reading what she really cared about.

And maybe, someday, he'd be able to pull his shattered mind together.

But first, he had to practice.

* * *

Right! So. Telepathic dreams. Here's my attempt to explain it: When there is an… event that triggers very powerful emotions ( of any sort – love, fear, hate… ), it leaves some psychic traces that usually linger on the area surrounding it ( so items or walls or what have you. ) Because of this it's common for psychics to pick these fragments up when they pass by. Only sometimes, if the memory is weak, it will be picked up by the psychic but just linger in their subconscious. It stays there for a while and eventually is expressed in dreams while they're asleep. In One to Ruin-canon that's called a telepathic dream. And since, back in the day, inmates in asylums actually were dunked in vats of ice water to supposedly rid them of their delusions, there was one instance of that and it stuck to the walls ( Saint's is an old building ) and poor Raz happened to pick it up… get where I'm going?

R&R! I really appreciate all your reviews, guys~


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